Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman-elect Eric Chu (朱立倫) is to assume leadership of the party at a ceremony on Tuesday next week, a KMT official said on Wednesday.
Chu, who won the KMT chairperson election on Saturday last week, is to take over from KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣).
The handover date was decided on Wednesday at a meeting of the KMT’s Central Standing Committee, which also confirmed the results of the chairperson election and approved Chiang’s resignation, the KMT official said.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Chiang, a legislator from Taichung, has been serving as interim chairman of the opposition party since March last year, when his predecessor, Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), resigned following the KMT’s resounding defeat in the presidential and legislative elections in January that year.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Central Standing Committee member Lin Chin-chieh (林金結) proposed that Chu assume leadership of the party as soon as possible, in light of national referendums in December and an imminent need for fundraising to maintain the party’s operations, the KMT official said.
The committee decided to hold a ceremony on Tuesday next week, at which Chiang would hand over the party leadership seal to Chu, who previously served as KMT chairperson from 2015 to 2016, the party official added.
In a meeting with party members in Yilan County on Wednesday, Chu said that as KMT chairman, one of his top priorities would be to campaign for a recall of Taiwan Statebuilding Party Legislator Chen Po-wei (陳柏惟) in a vote on Oct. 23.
The recall campaign was initiated by Yang Wen-yuan (楊文元), one of Chen’s constituents, who said that the lawmaker had been neglecting his constituency, behaving outrageously in the Legislative Yuan and on social media, and supporting the government’s decision to lift a ban on imports of pork containing traces of ractopamine.
Separately on Wednesday, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) said that an exchange of messages between Chu and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) after the KMT chairperson election showed that their parties both oppose Taiwanese independence and favor the so-called “1992 consensus.”
On Sunday, Xi sent Chu a congratulatory message, in which he reiterated the importance of the so-called “1992 consensus” and China’s opposition to Taiwanese independence.
In response, Chu said he hoped that the two parties would move toward common ground, while respecting their differences, with the so-called “1992 consensus” and opposition to Taiwanese independence serving as a foundation.
The “1992 consensus” — a term that former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) in 2006 admitted making up in 2000 — refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party that both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledge that there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
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